There are hair and nail salons in Sour Lake today, but none compare to the town's first spa, run from the natural sour waters spewing from the ground.

With its own reported healing powers, Sour Lake became a popular spot for well-to-dos of Jefferson County and beyond in the mid 19th century. But the spa earned a more mystical reputation with a former slave named Dr. Mud who was said to work magic with the sour waters.

"In 1865, Joseph Pivoto freed his slaves, one of whom was a very tall black man named Bazile," according to the late historian W.T. Block's book "Sour Lake, Texas - From Mud Baths to Millionaires."

"He had gained an early reputation as a 'medicine man' who treated other slaves with homeopathic herbs, a practice which may have had its origin in the early Acadian French "treteur" culture of frontier Louisiana rather than some African beginning."

After the Civil War, Bazile Brown, better known as Dr. Mud, gained considerable notoriety for his treatment of skin conditions by bathing folks in the four-acre lake that contained escaping gas and splotches of petroleum that caused the sour taste. (Hence the name, Sour Lake)

"I have known that oil was here ever since I been here, but my mission was to cure diseases," Dr. Mud is quoted as saying in Block's book.

Known for the short sleeves of his tattered clothing, Dr. Mud was said to have a "curiously twisted body, long flowing hair and strange weird eyes that seemed to look through you," the book details.

Initially he only treated black people, but many whites came to Sour Lake, Block wrote. Eventually Dr. Mud's treatments became so famous, he treated judges and other high officials, locals and those all the way from New York.

Block's book says Dr. Mud "lived to a very ancient age and died in Sour Lake in 1903."